Mr Cube The Economist (1951)

Tate & Lyle's Mr. Cube

From the April 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tate &  Lyle, Ltd., have recently had a large size advertisement appearing in the daily press. The advertisement consists of a series of cartoons entitled, “Where all the money went in 1950.”

It is an attempt to show that out of a gross income for the year amounting to £84,435,000 only £618,000 was left for net dividends to stockholders, equal to 1/7 of a farthing for each pound of sugar sold.

The advertisement states that, “ Tate & Lyle, Ltd., employ 8,500 workers.” If you divide the net dividend of £618,000 by the 8,500 workers you find it amounts to over £72 per head.

Taxation on profits amounted to £1,228,000 which again divided by the number of employees equals over £144 per head. This is used for running the capitalist state machine.

The total profits before taxation amounted to £2,196,000, wages and employees benefits totalled £3,700,000 which with the so called Prosperity Sharing Scheme made a total of £3,818,000 paid to the workers.

This can be expressed as £2,196,000 Unpaid Labour over £3,818,000 Paid Labour.

The rate of Surplus value being just over 57 per cent.

This is being generous to Mr. Cube, as one cartoon states that “£1,770,000 went in overheads and special expenses which includes money spent in self-defence.”

Special expenses can cover a multitude of sins. (One of them is the advertisement). One thing that can be certain is that the workers produced the wealth for these expenses.

The series of cartoons can easily mislead workers who do not look into the figures closely, however the expression unpaid labour over paid labour clearly shows why Mr. Cube takes such an interest in economics. —He is a bright little chap.

D. W. Lock

Blogger's Note:

Mr. Cube (see the above illustration) was a genuine cartoon character devised as a clever and effective company propaganda ploy by Tate & Lyle against the Labour Government's supposed threat to nationalize the British Sugar Industry. More details on this obscure bit of British political history can be found at the following link, Mr Cube the sugar lump.